Euro-zone troubles

In what can only be described as a short-term measure, the Central European Bank is preparing to buy up Italian and Spanish debts in an attempt to stabilise the Euro. This comes in the wake of the down-grading of the US credit-rating - which to be fair, is nowhere near as bad as actually defaulting on debt re-payments.
However, the market is jittery and some steady nerves are needed along with some strong leadership. Like it or not, you cannot spend your way out of debt, and the over-spending of recent years is starting to reveal itself.
The parallels with personal spending are obvious, we the consumers have been overspending, this has triggered government and municipal overspending, and once the debt starts to get to the unmanageable stage, some hard-hitting cuts have to be made whether you are talking about a household or as a national economy.
Member nations of the European economy must face cost-cutting head on, jobs will be forfeit as over-spending produces unrealistc demand for employment - when the spending is curbed, the jobs will go. Of course this is not a perfect model as the fallout is not limited to the specific over-spend areas, the effect will be economy wide.
It has long been my belief that much of this overspending is a result of the over-riding appetite for consumable gadgets that is prevalent in the Western economies. However, demand is so insistent, that consumer choice may dictate that gadget-related jobs can be sustained and more fundamental consumer goods manufacturing and marketing might be under threat. I'm not saying that people prefer iPads to food, but somewhere along the line, gadgets are becoming more of a necessity in the public consciousness and less of a luxury. Personally I am quite sure that this is not a good thing when along with the desire for the gadget, comes the likelihood that in 6 months time, the same piece of kit will be on eBay for a quarter of it's original price, sold to partially-fund the purchase of the next generation must-have kit (which, it turns out, the consumer can ill-afford).
The only good thing to come out of the uncertainty (if you are NOT a nett investor), is that interest rates remain abnormally low, and the BoE have not the stomach to raise them and the mortgages of half the nation along with them..